Power Your CRM with Social Media Triggers

Marketers who maximize results from the email channel have learned the powerful contribution that triggers can make in their overall strategy. Shopping cart abandonment, thank you for your order, product review after order are just a few examples of events that smart marketers are leveraging as opportunities to reach out to the customer with another offer.

Social media now gives marketers an environment rich with events that can be used to inspire outreach in numerous channels. Think about it. A Facebook fan who has raved about your products on your Wall has set off a viral advertising campaign to all her friends, not to mention reinforcing how great your brand is to your fans who saw her post. Doesn’t she deserve a thank you? Your Twitter follower who retweets your messages or recommends you in a hash tag event is your evangelist who deserves a hearty thanks, too. Why not reach out to these folks with an offer or program that rewards them for their loyalty and promotion?

Okay; I think I hear it coming. You can’t automate that process so it doesn’t scale. I think it’s a mistake to not test marketing concepts because they involve manual processes that don’t scale. Successful marketing techniques that begin as manual processes will ultimately get automated.

I started my direct marketing career in the magazine industry back in the mid 1980′s. It was a time when the industry was first beginning to develop technology that could scan the subscription cards that flooded in after we dropped millions of pieces of mail. Much of the new subscriber info was manually keyed. Who would have thought when email first came into our lives that sophisticated platforms would be developed to create, deploy, share and track marketing campaigns?

Think of all the other touch points in your social media platform where a customer or prospect has engaged in a way that is just begging for acknowledgment. Here are just a few that come to mind immediately: